Casey Aldridge's Latest Posts

This editorial may contain spoilers for readers who have yet to see Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and Marvel’s Logan. It also contains potential spoilers for readers unfamiliar with Schindler’s List, The Dark Knight Rises, and Marvel’s The Avengers. Our class on the problems of the Holocaust representation in art and memory was critically […]

On March 19, Peter Maass wrote in The Intercept that “for Donald Trump, a terror attack will be an opportunity not a curse.” Maass is right on the most basic level, and it’s quite extraordinary that the point is not being made by more voices in the media. It speaks to the fact that–even though […]

I attended a retreat with my scholarship program this weekend, which concluded on Sunday with a speaker who came to talk to us about “positive psychology.” The speaker was exceedingly friendly and energetic and cared deeply about the “good news” that he carried with him, but I’m afraid he will not be able to count […]

It has been six months — half a year — since Keith Lamont Scott was shot and killed by Charlotte-Mecklenburg police. It has been six months — half a year — since protesters shut down Old Concord Road, a stone’s throw from our University. The massive and impassioned protests that followed shook Charlotte’s establishment to […]

Over spring break I traveled with a group of friends to Milan, Berlin, and Paris. Among the many things we set out to see in our limited time in Europe was the German Reichstag in Berlin. The Reichstag is the seat of power in Germany, within which the Bundestag (or Parliament) meets for official legislative […]

I spent the weekend in Washington, D.C. with hundreds of thousands of friends, family and comrades. We weren’t there to celebrate the inauguration of the 45 President of the United States; instead, we were there to kick off four years of righteous defiance and resistance. Friday saw angry and militant protests in D.C., where protesters […]

On Jan. 13, 2016, I penned an opinion-editorial for this newspaper on New Year’s resolutions and the need to do away with them entirely. In that piece I lamented that 2015 had been “an awful year for the world.” I wrote that “at the beginning of 2015 I held so much hope for the year […]

Thanksgiving might be my favorite holiday. It is certainly my favorite secular holiday, though not at all because of the mythology and imagery around it. I love Thanksgiving in spite of its story, which attempts to normalize the colonization of this continent and genocidal actions towards the indigenous peoples of this land. I love every […]

In the week since the election, Hillary Clinton has said “we owe [Donald Trump] an open mind and a chance to lead.” President Barack Obama said that “we are now all wishing for [Trump’s] success in uniting and leading the country.” Even the AFL-CIO has come out and said that “if he is willing to […]

There’s been a weird and hard to explain uptick in clown sightings the past few weeks. Late at night, on street corners or in the woods, and calling in threats to schools, a remarkable amount of attention is starting to be given to what the media is calling America’s “clown craze.” Just in time for […]

Two years ago this month, I wrote my first piece with the Niner Times. It ran in print under the headline “Ferguson Here.” That article explored racial re-segregation in Charlotte, and the militarization of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department in the wake of the 2012 Democratic National Convention. In it I spelled out just a few […]

I’ve come across quite a bit on social media over the past few weeks, since House Bill 2 was passed by the State Legislature and Gov. Pat McCrory signed it, where (frequently white, cisgender, heterosexual, middle class) people have called the bathroom statute of the law “a distraction” from the real issues of the bill. […]

John, my co-worker and friend, wrote last week that he’s not a fan of avoidable confrontation and neither am I, really. Confrontation is almost never fun, almost always painful and without exception uncomfortable. But confrontation is necessary for the reconciliation of right and wrong and for the abolition of unjust power imbalances. Sometimes my political positions might make […]

If you read the pieces I’ve been writing recently, you’re aware I’m not all that enthused by new university president, Margaret Spellings. There’s something about a right-wing coup d’etat, which promises to negatively impact the school and university system I hold dear, that just doesn’t have me that optimistic. I’m not the only one, either. […]

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